the reel ess

Many, many times My dad and I would catch one each early and comment that it was a good sign, only to have the fish get lockjaw right after. get lockjaw. My dad would always say we just hit the tail end of a feeding time. I don't believe that now. No matter what the solunar table says, morning is the best time when the water's warm, followed by late evening. Then there are occasional bursts of activity during the day. I used to think it was a jinx to remember the net and/or the scale.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal and I'm sure it happens, but I've never heard of a case of it.

I fish a good many places that are privately stocked. What would they most likely be?

I have two kayaks. On the lighter one, it's good enough to run a strap through the handles in the middle, near the seat and hook into the rear anchors on the truck. The other is a Feelfree Lure 13.5. It's 1.5' longer. I do the same with it, but I run another strap on the front through the handle built into the bow. I wrap the strap once around the handle before I hook it in the front anchors and tighten.

I have a Cabela's ZX frog-specific model. It's a pool cue as well. It does affect your ability to walk the frog, but it's nice to be able to drag the fish up, out of and across slop and lilies. The trick is have a bit of slack in the line to pop against and it will walk. Fish will bite the frog in colder water than you'd think. I was able to get a few bites earlier this spring than I had ever tried before. If you have a dedicated combo for it, just keep trying it until it doesn't work. Then, when it's too cold you can use that combo as a second jig pitching rod. One cool method that works in cooler water is to cast the frog over a limb and dangle it into the water like it fell in and is struggling to get out. If you scoured YouTube, you've already seen this on Bamabass's channel. just fish it slower as the water cools.

I can tell a difference in how the fish fight between locations of FL bass. I can tell a difference between different seasons at the same location. I'm in SC so I doubt I've ever caught a northern strain largie.

That's just begging for poachers.

Sprinker Frog, Zoom Trick Worm, hollow body frog, weightless T rigged Senko. If it's not a complete mat of vegetation, I also agree with the soft swimbaits.

I'm all for conservation, but what you describe there is plain robbery. Come see us in SC.

Academy is the closest store to me with a good selection of tackle. The only competition they have in town is Dick's. As we all know that's no competition at all. I talked myself into one of the Mettle reels because of the good customer ratings. When i went to get it, I opted for the TAC-40 to get the higher retrieve ratio and it just felt like better quality in my hand. It has been a good one thus far. It's on my jig rod, spooled with braid, so it gets some abuse.

I fished my buddy's dink factory pond a couple hours yesterday and caught 7. It was almost direct sun the whole time. But about halfway through the trip a cloud came over and the wind picked up a bit. I saw a dust devil near the pond where my buddy had plowed a deer food plot. It moved on down into the pond and started to spin the water. It was actually lifting water off the pond in the familiar tiny tornado motion. My mind couldn't immediately process it. My first thought was that fish were chasing bait out of the water. Then i figured it out. As it came across the pond, it spread out to where it just looked like a circular wind. It came right by me and I held onto my handles tight. It just rocked me a bit and went on past. It left a trail of foam on the water. It continued on land on the other side. I'm almost 50 and have never experienced this first hand in my entire life. It was quite a sight to behold.

As stated above, roll the cast. A rod with a little tip will help out when you thumb the spool just before the bait enters. But I'm sure there have been times the splash got me a reaction bite.

I mean no disrespect. But if your hobby is sticking fish with sharp hooks, and ours is, sooner or later one will get hurt. I can tell you this is very common with the wacky rig. Of all the techniques I've used, this one is by far the worst for hooking fish deeply. You can cut down on that by rigging it Texas style. It still works. I don't know how much awareness a fish has. If it really bothers you, whack the fish with the heel of your flip-flop or club it. Take it home and eat it if it's not from badly polluted water. Native Americans used to thank the animal for sustaining them. It's no sin to eat one. It was not going to live forever anyway.

The smaller they are, the better they taste. Try keeping some in the 1 lb range and fillet them. They get crispier as well. If you're maintaining a pond, this is also a way to manage it for bigger bass. I find that the cleaner and/or cooler the water, the better they taste. I'd rather eat bass from a clean pond than crappie from a dirty, large public reservoir.

I've had good success with a hollow body frog when this is happening, especially in the lilies. Bass are opportunistic enough that they'll take what hits the water when they're staring up, looking for the next meal. If you think about it, a frog would just be another link in the food chain between dragonfly and bass.

IDK. Probably a wide jon boat rigged with casting decks and a trolling motor on front.

My dad and I were trolling along a bank with a deep dropoff. There was a "wandering stump" in the vicinity. There used to be a lot of those on that lake, just logs that floated off during high water and weren't completely waterlogged yet so one end stuck out. Well, we decide to pull up the trolling motor and take off and my dad guns it and runs right over this stump. The boat bounced hard off to the side and scared the hell out of us both. It was a riveted aluminum model and we have to replace a few rivets. We were crappie fishing from our pontoon boat once and decided to move to another spot. The boat just didn't want to get up to speed. It didn't have a misfire, just weak. We got to our destination and discovered we'd left two anchors in the water. My dad and I were out in my fish and ski (yes, I fished almost exclusively with my dad) and when we went to crank...nothing. Not even the click of a weak battery. There was another boat in the cove that offered us a tow and we accepted. I got the boat home and we poured over the manual trying to decide what had happened. We thought the oil injection had failed and there was a relay broken. I missed about 5 months of fishing because I was too cheap to take it to a mechanic. One day my dad calls me up and says...GO LOOK AT THE KILL SWITCH. ? I was relieved and mortified at the same time. I know the first rule of mechanics is always look for the cheapest fix first. But I still didn't.

The double uni is a little more involved, but that's for leaders. I like the surgeon's knot for braid to mono. I have no problem with a Palomar. But I don't even use fluoro for anything. The water here is not very clear, I fish shallow places and I plain do not like it.

When i started using braid I did not use any leader. I started using a mono leader on all braid lines because I read pros said that it would increase my numbers and size. I do not believe it did so. But once you buy into it, it's difficult to discount. I started using jigs a lot a while back and I was using a 15# mono leader, throwing the jig into heavy cover. It occurs to me that it's senseless to have a 30# braid main line and 15# mono leader unless you want to break off, and I don't. So I stopped using any leader with the jig. I'm still in limbo with the spinning rod.

I'm not superstitious, but I'm not taking any chances. No bananas. Other than that, not really. I'm going down to Loo'siana, get me a mojo hand I'm going down to Loo'siana, get me a mojo hand Gonna have all you pretty women right here at my command

I like a 1/2 oz. Arky with a wire tied skirt, but really, just about any jig if it's black and blue.

Best Advice: Always have a jig tied on. Gerald G-Man Swindle Hon. Mention: Trophy bass are more willing to bite around the new moon and full moon. I read this once in a list of statistics compiled from a survey on certified trophy bass catches. My last 2 PBs were caught around the new moon. Hon Mention 2: Get out early. Don't oversleep. My last two PBs have also come around sunrise. Worst Advice: Check the solunar tables before planning a trip.

So Glenn, do you use leaders? A lot of people, myself included, don't think it matters, but we ain't taking no chances. LOL. I stopped using one for a jig because it's usually in heavy cover. Doesn't make sense to me to use 50# braid, then attach 15# leader to it and throw that leader into heavy cover. As for bass being shallow in summer, I just caught my PB out of some grass that's maybe 2' deep. And there were some dead fish floating in that reservoir, I assume from depleted oxygen levels. Yet, there she was.

My dad was taking me fishing before I was old enough to hold a rod or pole. He used to tie our old Glassmaster boat up to a stump and pole fish with minnows. I walked the bank a lot with a cane pole at our lake house. Later we started making our own brushpiles and we got a pontoon boat to fish from. We used to have as many as 8 people on that boat. Then we would have community fish fries. He got an aluminum bass boat when I was 13 and that's when i got into bass and never looked back.

Edit: I've replaced several pawls but never a worm gear. The pawl is made of softer material for that reason.